Is My Kid’s Doodling a Waste of Time? What I Learned As a Mom and 4th Grade Teacher
Last Tuesday, I was sitting at our chipped oak kitchen table, grading a stack of my 4th graders’ book reports, when my husband leaned over from the couch, nodding at my 10-year-old’s side of the table. Jax was supposed to be finishing his long division homework, but instead of filling in the answers on the worksheet, he was covering every blank margin, the back of the page, even the edge of his water bottle label, with tiny, scaly dinosaurs. “Should we say something?” he whispered, so Jax wouldn’t hear. “He’s been at that for 20 minutes and hasn’t finished five problems. Is that just a waste of time?”
I get that question at least once a month. Two days before that kitchen conversation, I’d sat through a parent conference with Lila’s mom, who pulled out Lila’s math notebook to show me. Every page was covered in tiny flowers and cartoon dogs, half the notes written around the drawings. “I know she says she pays attention,” her mom told me, “but how much learning can she actually be doing if she’s drawing the whole time? Isn’t this a waste of class time?”
I get the impulse. When I first started teaching 12 years ago, I thought the same thing. I’d take away doodle-covered notebooks, make kids sit with their hands folded on their desks during whole-class instruction, proud that I was keeping my class on track. Then I remembered when I was 12, in 7th grade pre-algebra, my teacher did the exact same thing to me. She pulled my notebook full of stray cat doodles out of my hands, threw it in the trash can at the front of the room. I didn’t absorb a single thing she taught that day. I just sat there, my face hot, staring at the clock, and I couldn’t even tell you what topic we were covering. Before that, I’d been passing quizzes just fine, as long as I had my doodles to keep my restless hands busy.
A couple years ago, I started paying closer attention to the doodlers in my own class. I had three kids who drew nonstop during our daily read-aloud time. When I stopped to ask comprehension questions, they were the first ones to raise their hands, they caught small details I’d almost missed that the kids staring straight at me didn’t notice. I did an informal check at the end of that semester: I pulled the quiz scores of the 12 kids who doodled daily, compared them to the 15 who didn’t doodle at all. The average was almost identical. A few of the doodlers scored 10% higher than the class average.
That’s when it clicked for me. For a lot of kids, their brains need something low-stakes to do while they’re thinking. If their hands are busy with doodling, it keeps the restless, wandering part of their brain occupied so the other part can focus on the work. It’s not a distraction—it’s a tool. But that doesn’t mean there are no lines to draw. Over the years, I’ve worked out small, realistic rules that work for my students and my own kid, no big fights required.
The first thing I tell parents is to test it instead of banning it right away. Last year, one dad told me his son drew all through remote classes, and he was convinced it was the reason his grades were slipping. I told him to try a simple one-week trial: let his son draw during three classes, then no drawing during the other three, then compare how many questions he answered correctly and how much homework he turned in. At the end of the week, the dad texted me that his son’s scores were actually 5% higher when he could draw. He just needed that outlet. If it’s not hurting output, it’s not a waste, no matter what it looks like.
If you’re worried about doodling taking over, set tiny, clear boundaries instead of a full ban. In my class, I don’t allow doodling during tests, when kids need all their focus on the questions. At home, we have one rule for Jax: he has to leave the main section of his homework page clear for his answers, and he can draw all he wants on the back or the margins. That’s it. It’s not a big lecture. Instead of barking “stop drawing and do your work,” I just say, “That’s a really cool T-Rex. Can you move the next one to the margin so you have room for your division answers?” No shame, just a clear line.
If doodling is actually taking over all work time, schedule it instead of banning it. I had a student a few years ago who would skip her whole reading assignment just to draw. Instead of telling her she couldn’t draw anymore, we worked out a simple deal: 10 minutes of drawing right when she got home from school, before she started any homework. After she finished her work, she could draw as much as she wanted. That cut down on doodling during homework time by 90%, and she never felt like she was being punished for something she loved.
A couple months ago, Jax had to do a report on the Mesozoic Era for science. I was helping him gather materials, and he pulled out that half-full notebook full of dinosaur doodles he’d been drawing for months. He cut out his favorites, glued them onto his poster board, labeled each one with their name and diet. He got a great grade, and when I quizzed him on the names a week later, he still remembered every single one. He’d drawn them over and over, so they stuck.
Last night, Jax brought me his new notebook, flipped to the back to show me a three-headed T-Rex he’d drawn with permanent marker, complete with little stick figure people running away. I asked him if he’d finished his social studies reading guide, he flipped the front page over, and there all the answers were, written neatly around a tiny stegosaurus in the corner. My husband still raises an eyebrow sometimes when he sees half a notebook full of scribbles instead of neat notes, and I still get questions from parents asking if they should make their kid stop. I don’t have a one-size-fits-all answer. Some kids do need a blank page to focus, and that’s fine. But for a lot of kids, those little scribbles aren’t a waste of time. They’re just how their brains work. Right now, that works for us, and I’m fine with not having a perfectly neat notebook.
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